New Excalibur #2

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Reviewed By: James ‘Name is always here’ Hatton
Title: Cast a Giant Shadow

Writer: Chris Claremont
Pencils: Michael Ryan
Inks: Rick Ketcham
Colors: Pete Pantazis
Lettering: Tom Orzechowski
Publisher: Dan Buckley

Oh Claremont Oh Claremont,
Oh how I loathe thee-
You write for the ‘X’,
yet don’t respect Charlie.

It’s post House of M,
and this is your scheme:
To ignore the new rules,
and rewrite Charlie’s dream.

You bend at the rules,
even when they are new.
Oh Claremont Oh Claremont
oh how I loathe you.

STORY!

Okay, that was mean. I’m sorry Chris Claremont. I’m also sorry about the evil altar I’ve placed of you in my bedroom, but I won’t stop performing black mass there until you explain to me what the hell is wrong.

You see New Excalibur number one started off interestingly enough. The new team had begun to form and immediately there begins a problem. The X-Men show up. Now I know you are asking yourself, ‘How, Mister Hatton?’ and I say to you that I really don’t know either. I will assume that it will be explained in future issues.

The concern is that this book really deals with only one person. That person is Sage. From top to bottom, this isn’t a horrible book. It’s high action, and quite dirty (more on that shortly), the problem is that already I feel the sinking hands of Deux Ex Machinae slipping into it with Claremont’s new favorite lovechild in the human computer, Sage.

The Excalibur Team take a beating (note – Excalibur PLUS Nightcrawler, Kitty, and Rachael Grey) and out of nowhere comes Sage to say, “OH! RIGHT! I have a plan.”

That’s gripe number one. My second consideration for this book is that it really has a dirty father feel to it. Each of the ‘NEW’ ‘OLD’ X-Men are wearing skintight fetishy costumes, and in the first few pages, Kitty and Rachael are taken out into a Kitty-sinking-sixty-nine sandwich, and begin to take on the fetishy outfits from EVIL Professor X’s world.

Why is all of this going on? As far as we can tell so far, is to collect Nocturne, but for what purpose… we are left without.

ART!

Artistically, this issue isn’t so bad. (Note – storywise it’s not that bad either.. it’s gratuitous and boring.. but not bad) Anyway, Michael Ryan has a hold on these characters. I could argue that his females all look a bit generic in their appearance. They are all attractively athletic, not very busty, and have a penchant for wearing midriffs.

If you pay attention mid way through the book, when Allison appears, it seems as if he begins to take more detail into account, as she and Juggernaut are such a dramatic difference from the near similar Rachael and Kitty.

OVERALL!

As a long time reader of all things X, I haven’t come to expect much out of Claremont. Call it trained response, but he’s been sucking up the world he gave a golden era for years now, and it makes me mad. Especially when I saw hope in New Excalibur Number One and he has already gone out of his way to write himself into a need for one of his pet characters.

The same could be said about Brian Michael Bendis and Jessica Jones, but the fact is with Jessica Jones, she wasn’t a needed character. She was a character that would come in the background unnoticably and be useful when the time was right. Plus Bendis writes a better single issue, and has for the last five years.

Zing.